Key indicators to see if your AdWords campaigns work

Measuring the performance of AdWords campaigns is the most important thing in our work, and for this there are a series of indicators that provide us with the necessary information to optimize them, if we know where to find them.

Users are exposed to a large amount of information day after day, so they have become very selective when clicking on certain pages. They will only pay attention to a message if they consider it of great value to them. To determine if our message is reaching the right audience, we must first determine the goals of our AdWords campaigns and then "link" them to the correct metrics .


In today's post we present 10 key indicators that will help you analyze what is working and what should be optimized or eliminated in your AdWords campaigns.

Traffic
Measuring traffic to the main website is an important tool to measure the effectiveness of SEO, but you can also get more detailed measurements by looking at the landing pages of your individual PPC campaigns. The number of site visits will give you an overview of which campaign is driving traffic.

If you think you do not have many visits, you should review your individual marketing channels and optimize what does not work.

Impressions
Successful ads should start appearing to the people who are within your target audience. Each time your ad is shown, it's called "impression."

The impression metric is not necessarily an indicator that tells you how your ad is working, nor the most important one, but it does show you how many people are actually seeing it, and you can not have an ad that works well if nobody sees it, so You should also take into account the number of impressions you receive per day, week or month. 
If the number of impressions of your ads is not increasing progressively, you will have to increase the bids of your keywords , since it means that other people are offering higher bids for them and your ad simply is not showing.


CTR
The traditional measurement of key performance indicators ( KPI ) in the so-called "graphic advertising" has been the click-through rate (CTR). When a user sees your ad, they have the opportunity to click on it. The percentage of people who click on your ads is called the "clickthrough rate." These are the people who have participated in it, and a high CTR indicates that it is working exceptionally well. By measuring this indicator you can discover a search term that outperforms another, or a call to action that has actually worked better than others. To carry out a good campaign optimization, you should analyze the ads that get the best CTR to determine how the entire strategy can be routed to get more clicks.

There are many tactics you can use to improve on this particular indicator. You can create different variations of the copy of an ad and when some time passes and all of them have been shown, AdWords will show you which of them offers a higher CTR and will help you optimize them in the future. Also make sure you are using ad extensions, which are very visual and add a lot of information that is key to the user.


Conversion and conversion rate
Measuring conversions is one of the most important metrics you should consider. But remember, a conversion does not necessarily mean a sale. The conversion objectives may include increasing interactivity or generating sales opportunities by filling out a form or commenting on a publication. When a user clicks on your ad, they access a landing page - which encourages them to take a specific action that will help them become a paying customer. People who comply with that action contribute to your conversion rate, which measures the number of users who click on your ads and how many, after that, become your customers. You have less than ten seconds to get a user's attention, so make sure you have a strong "call to action"!

This indicator will also let you know your ROI ( Return on Investment or Return on Investment ). The better your conversion rate, the more profitable your AdWords campaign will be.

For this you will have to set a specific goal and measure these conversions, and if your conversion rates are low you should analyze the aspects of your website, including design, navigation, relevance, potential participation and the payment process.

Cost per conversion
The cost per conversion is calculated by dividing the amount of money you spend in your Google AdWords campaign by the number of conversions. The lower the result, the more profitable the campaign is.

Cost per click
The CPC measures the price paid for each click on an ad, a value determined by Google AdWords through a combination of factors such as the level of quality and the ad's ranking.

This is calculated by dividing the total cost of clicks on an ad by the total number of clicks, and the cost of each click is determined by the value of the keywords it contains.

If your CPC is high in relation to conversions, you should review your keywords and adjust them to see which ones work and which ones do not.

Average position
The average position shows the position of your ad compared to the position of the competition. In general, you want to be in the first 3 positions, since any higher value means that your ad is appearing at the bottom of the search results page.

Again, your average position depends on how much you're willing to pay for the keywords and their level of quality. The more you invest, the higher you'll appear in Google results and the more visible your ad will be.

Quality Score (QS)
The Quality Score of a keyword is a classification system used by Google that determines whether an ad is eligible to receive an impression in a particular search, how much it will cost to click on that impression and in what position it will be displayed.

A better QS offers a better ad position at a lower CPC. So, what does Google have in mind for this rating?

Internal factors such as the historical CTR of the account, the relevance of the keywords, and external factors such as the quality of the landings pages and their relevance.

Bounce Rate
Most companies can measure the customer retention rate simply by looking at the number of customers they convert again.

This metric is affected by elements such as the usability of your website, the originality of your content, and design elements such as ease of navigation, contact information, FAQ section ...

If users visit your page, but do not return, you may need to consider elements such as design and relevance, the use of keywords and your sales strategy.

The bounce rate helps you determine if you need to improve your content to make it more attractive to users. Committed users are more likely to go back and convert again.

Where do they come from?
Google Analytics has a section that shows you where your visitors come from, a very useful indicator to determine which channels perform well and which do not.

The high organic results will indicate that your SEO is working because people visit your site after conducting a search, high social traffic indicates your advertising and presence in social networks, and external results will show you how effectively you mention your Brand on third-party sites.

Each of these metrics indicates a story and provides concrete data on what to keep working on. Also keep in mind that although these are some of the most common and relevant KPIs that you can find within an AdWords campaign, each business is different and, therefore, can value certain indicators more than others depending on business objectives.

We hope that these indicators will help you from now on to get the most out of your campaigns and that you can analyze them day after day.